Sunday, 12 February 2012

Internet safety

Stardoll recently did an internet safety campaign. They might be overreacting with certain things, but they do have a point. These days it's fairly easy to get a person's information over the internet and things like embezzlement, identity theft etc. really do happen.For the more informed: with laws like SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA being in debate, I think we'll all have to be more careful soon.

Did you know that there is an average of 4 background applications collecting your information, and 5 on the Stardoll homepage?

Quantcast is following you right now. They're selling your information to advertisers. I bet you didn't know that.

Furthermore, magine this;You finished school. You're looking for a job. All your employee has to do to get your information is find you on Facebook. If you're not careful, he'll see you drink, smoke and possibly some other things you don't want him to know. And just like that, you lost a job.

My suggestions:1. Be careful. Don't post everything about you on social websites.2. If you don't want to be followed, some applications can be found to ensure your privacy:For Firefox, you have add-ons like Ghostery, NoScript, BetterPrivacy or WOT that are used by millions of users. (I use Ghostery and I recommend it to everyone.)For Chrome, you have Ghostery, WOT, AdBlock etc.I'm not gonna search for Internet Explorer add-ons because I hope you're all smart enough to download either Firefox or Chrome.

There is also a safe search engine that doesn't collect your data, called DuckDuckGo. It speaks for itself: